Yellow is Healthy

Some more shooting this morning before running chores.

Same set up as the last couple posts: f45 at 300mm macro 1/250.

I've taken a 17x19" piece of art paper, set it on the counter in my kitchen and curled it up against the wall for a backdrop.

I'm using two flashes off-camera.

The one on camera left is pointed straight up. It hits the bottom of the shelf in the kitchen and bounces back to provide overall light.

The flash on camera right is very close to the subject and firing through a diffuser dome.

The flashes are on manual power, so you can play around with how much you give the two different sources to affect how lit. In the past I've used TTL (which is kind of like "automatic") and made +/- changes based on that to balance my light. Lately I'm moving away from that; especially in situations like this where things aren't changing on-the-fly much.

Anyway: the point is I wanted to shoot the fibery item above. I took a few shots, but the color always runs to cranberry instead of the rich burgundy it really is.

After about 6 snaps I espied the item below and switched subjects

Any sense of what it is? Looks woody, right? Kind of: it's the bottom of a dried mushroom.

I liked the model-city look that the hard light and high aperture gave it, so I kept shooting for a while.
Afterwards I was thinking: this is about the third or fourth thing in this color family I've shot recently. Not that I care one way or the other, but in my Art Theory and Criticism class we were trained to always examine our reactions and isolate the personal portion. It helps strengthen your critical muscle and teaches you about yourself.

So what's with all the yellow?

I think it's a sign of healthiness.

I don't entirely believe in Chinese Acupuncture medicine 100% but I've seen very strong results from it, so I pay attention. In the 5 Element school I am the Earth sign: yellow is my color.

Heck, as a jaundiced baby I was even born yellow.

And I am starting to turn the corner on the move. I still feel like I'm on a business trip, but it's coming around. I'm getting more active and less exhausted (although there is still a lot of that).

I think things spiral up and spiral down, so I'm trying to put more in as I'm on the ups. Do more, shoot more, go out more get active.

So basically: I like a yellow, creamy color.
On a side note: that cranberry color infected everything it touched. You only see it zoomed way in, but it was on this guy too. I edited those shots out

Prepone It

One of the vendors we work with was unable to attend a meeting I had scheduled on Friday. She sent me a note proposing to move the time a couple of hours earlier. So, like 11am instead of 1pm.

Her text requested that we kindly prepone the meeting.

Prepone? Ah; the opposite of postponing. I suppose that makes it just poning if you don't do anything.

Well, it wasn't the dumbest word I heard that day.

My counterpart supervisor was talking about this restaurant she had been to where the (female) waitresses and staff were all dressed very provocatively. It came as sort of a shock to her.

Later, I was in a separate conversation with other folks about differing BBQ places in the area. I mentioned the restaurant where the girls dress slutty. Everyone knew immediately what I was talking about: oh that place. That's a breastaurant.

A what now?

Breast-aurant. Apparently that phenomenon is pretty common here; they were all able to rattle off half a dozen of them. Oh, brother.

Anyway. I don't have much to report.

These are some snaps I was working on earlier.

I spent some time trying different lighting and aperture combinations to see what would happen. After a while, I had something I was amused with and started setting new arrangements. The brussel-sproat looking thing back there is one of those vase-fillers you buy at Target. I was happy with the sharpness falloff I was getting on it, so I was looking forward to editing them. Imagine my sadness when I saw that I had captured all the little ugly tears in the surface and sloppy glue trails that held it together.

Should have looked closer. Instead I preponed my editing and ended up with a smaller set of things to choose from. Even the "keepers" I'm showing you here you can see the glue amd stuff.

Bleagh

Ugly Up Close

I took some snaps of this thing this morning.

It's some sort of potpourri thing. I was interested in it because they look like little flowers, but are spiny and hard. They seem like the fossils of flowers or something.

Well, the point is the above shot is about what it looks like sitting on my table or in the viewfinder of the camera. Pleasant enough, good lines and nice way it scoops light to show the form.

Well, this is what it looks like close up at f42

The bone texture of the plant is more apparent, and so is every speck, mote and crack.

One of the things I like about photography is seeing what things will look like photographed. Sometimes it's fantastic, other times not as much. It's hard to know where to go when you get these kinds of results, because you didn't really have a goal in mind in when you started. You did it to see what would happen, and then were disappointed that what happened wasn't great on its own.

So then you get to the point where the experiment becomes more directed. Your results force you to recognize that you weren't really a dispassionate scientist, you had something in mind that was cooler, but you still don't really know what it was, so you just play around with different things. I like that the thing has a little beak in the center, I just want it to look less like paper pulp.

I need something more in the middle, something more like this.
There's still so much I don't understand at all. I need to get shooting more

Karma is Currency

So, I usually work 10 hours a day. Sometimes, less, often more. Today I was there 12 and they were tough hours. We had some problems and I have a bad story to tell tomorrow. I tell you this to set the stage for the fact that as I go home, I'm tired and possibly even a tiny bit crabby.

Nah, scratch that: I didn't feel crabby, just sort of tired enough to be less-guarded in my thoughts. The point is, on the way home I decide to stop at my local corner quickie mart deal and buy a cold drink. So, I do just that, navigating the aggressive drivers in around the gas pumps, find my parking spot and leg it in to the store.

I get my beverage and step in line. After a few moments of the line not moving, I step out of my brain fog to assess the cause. It's the gentleman in front of me. He's trying to buy a bottle of wine with his buddy and is having some sort of hold up. With nothing to do but wait, I have plenty of time to take stock of his attire.

The first thing I notice is that he is chewing one of those sword-style toothpicks. You know the kind- with the U-shaped end with the dental floss on it? Well enough. Then I notice that in case he needs another toothpick he has a dozen others on standby.

Sticking out of his hair.

He asks the counter-guy again how much his purchase is. $7.35. He counts out some change on the counter. And counts again. How much was the wine again? $7.35. More counting.

Now my uncharitable-side comes out. Look at this scum, I think. With his dirty, sweaty bills wadded on the counter into a tiny ball. Counting out his pennies to buy booze. Pah! When it's MY turn, I'm going to pay with a crisp 20 that is nice and neat. I'm much neater and cleaner than this fellow and his buddy who has taken a bunch of free coffee cups from the store to drink the wine with. Pah!

So, the dude figures out his (exact) change and it's my turn.

One six pack of imported fancy beer. $9 or so.

Here's your change, mister: a wad of grubby completely-unflattened out singles that 30 seconds ago were in the sweatpants of the dude with toothpick swords in his hair.

They never even made it all the way into the register.

Thanks for the comeuppance, Universe.

The teen behind the bar wishes me Peace on my way out, holding up the two fingers. Good advice.

Yankee Pride, or the Blizzard of 2011

It snowed last night.

It started as a thunderstorm that turned into hail. The hail woke up me, the thunder kept me up. Weird to see thunder and lightning in a snowstorm.

But I fell back to sleep and woke up to the news that there was a giant, very dangerous storm that is ransacking the state. Actually, the word the liked to use best was treacherous. That, evil, deceitful storm! Such treacherous travel! Deceiving the wayfarer with its untold danger! Doesn't seem that underhanded to me; you drive on ice, you're going to slide.

But anyway, the news urges us all to stay inside at all costs and now I have to decide what to do. I've been in one traffic accident caused by icy conditions and I have no desire to share the road with panicky Texans dealing with a rare storm. But the office is open, and so there isn't much choice so off I go.

First: let me say that as a new garage owner, what a delight it is having that. Warm, dry car and hands. No chiseling and scraping, very nice.

Second: there was maybe an inch and half of snow on the ground. You can see how much made it onto my deck above. Nothing. The drive in was delightful. One of my best drives to work yet, in fact. There were a couple of minor spots (you cant go that slow up the hill, dude! Don't get on the bumper of the guy stopped at the top of the hill on the ice! If you are stuck on the ice in traffic, put your hazards on! Correct that fishtail!) but for the most part the roads were very clear of other motorists and I liked the peace. And it had pretty much stopped. I didn't even need my wipers.

I will give them this, though; it's not the snow, it's the ice and they are nearly completely unprepared for it. Big stretches of icy roadway were actually worse on the drive home, even though they had all day to salt them. I can understand why there are lots of accidents and people stay home.

But if Santa Anna had wanted to take over this place, he could have beaten them by fighting for it in Canada. Big bad Texas went running from an inch of powder.

Work was also peaceful. Pretty much everybody called in as a "work from home day".

But who sucked it up and actually went in?

Who braved the treacherous drive and showed up to keep the place going?

Northerners.

Well, Northerners without children who were set home from school, but Northerners.

Yee haw.

The Shape of Discontent

One of my teammates I was just on the road with for two weeks has some unusual eating habits. First of all he is an aspiring vegetarian, but can't seem to work it out. While some people tread that dietary path for reasons of health or conscience, my chum is on it because meat seems kind of weird to him. Just some meat. If it seems to meaty. Or isn't disguised enough. Or something like that.

He has a bunch of foibles like that. This is too stringy, that smell reminds him of something he doesnt like, that thing is just creepy. It goes on and on. The one I was thinking about today was that he doesn't like cashews because of their shape.

Now, I respect taking a strong stance against an oddly-shaped foodstuff. Eggplant seems kind of weird to me like that so I steer clear of it. But the delicious cashew? It's shape seems full of warm character. Like a comma, but really I picture it more of an apostrophe or teamed up to make a semi colon. It seems to have something to say. The quote marks of the nut world.

Perhaps they are curled up take a nap? We often see them in the can spooning each other. That's generally pleasant. Does my friend think that they are up to something? That their curvy shape implies some sort of moral ickiness? Like they might do their business around corners.

When I pressed him on the matter, he said that he wasn't sure: that they were just weird.

So, I got bought some at the store today and took a closer look.

Now, with most things under the 300mm zoom lens, stuff looks a little different. You see the details you overlook in day to day life. I started seeing things in the cashew that I didn't like: in some of the shots they had a grub-worm aspect. Little nodes looking like tiny feet. It was all-too organic. They were too bumpy, too malformed. I started to get a creepy feeling too. Where was the happy smooth quotation mark that I pictured?

But I know that everything you shoot that tight ends up with a certain amount of that going on. We see things as tidy from a distance, but up close we see the flaws and lose our comfortable sense of overall form. I find it with flowers; from a distance we see the idea of them, grace and form. But in tight they are a mess: pollen all over the place and stuff falling all over. Very untidy. I like that about flowers, they pull it off.

My man the cashew was giving me doubt, though.

Symmetrical nuts like the almond have it made. They form a nice teardrop, and they have very gentle, graceful slopes. It's easy to admire the almond. Cashews in comparison are unmade bed, like a peanut that went wrong somehow.

I frowned at the cashew and paused to reflect.

Absently, I popped my subject matter's mate into my mouth and munched away on a few.

Delicious.

All was forgiven.

A Ridiculous Exchange

I looked up from my work and realized it was 5:45pm.

Eep. I knew I had a package waiting for me, so I finished up my emails and packed to go home.

Now, what this means is that there was a Christmas present that was too big to fit in my mail slot or the auxiliary slot for sorta-big packages. So they left the package at the front desk of the complex and I could sign for it when I got back from the road.

Today was my first chance at that and the office closes at six. It sometimes takes 30-45 minutes to drive the 6 miles from work to home. Would I make it in time to get my package?

It seemed unlikely. With my license plates still unswitched to Texas, I get concerned about being pulled over for Driving While Yankee, so I like to keep the speed nice and legal, further hampering my chances to make it home in time for presents.

It's a chancey drive with a couple of sudden stops. Me looking at green lights instead of brake lights, but as I hit the home stretch it's 5:58. By the time I park it'll be 6pm. Will they close on the dot or linger? It looks dark in there, but I go on in and the place is stacked. Sweet.

One of the pretty young girls that works there saunters over, asking if I need help. It's strange, but in my apartment search nearly all of the places we looked at the helpers were all pretty young girls. Except that one old lady and that dude.

But I digress: it's helper time and we are finally getting to the Ridiculous Exchange that titles this blog entry.

I tell my helper my apartment number and she hauls out a big package.

"Oooh!" I say.

She smiles "Looks like a good one."

"Yes." I tell her, "and I don't get many presents."

Her eyes narrow slightly but she's still smiling "Aw, how come?"

"Because I'm always on the Naughty list!" I confess.

She chuckles as I sign the form and then notices the sticker on the box.

"Look" she says "It says it has alcohol in the box! That's nice."

I go from fake-embarassed at being fake-naughty to fake-excited again. "How nice!" I exclaim.

Yes, yes, fun exchange. I go home, get my mail and stuff and finally get to the package:

Ridiculous and true.